


distance

by fluffysfics



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Nightmares, fluff with a sprinkling of angst, gently cheesy romance tropes, inadvisable flirting, pre-spyfall, video calls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27594155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: The Doctor gets a phone call in the middle of the night.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	distance

It’s late at night when the Doctor’s phone rings. 

She’s taken to keeping it by her bedside, so that she can curl up and text O while her fam sleep. It’s comforting. It saves her from being alone. 

They’d exchanged a few brief texts earlier in the evening, and then he’d gone to bed, and the Doctor had taken to staring up at the gently shifting, sparkling stars on her bedroom ceiling. Her TARDIS changes them for her every night, so she always has new patterns to find when she can’t sleep. 

It’s been weeks since she slept, and she‘s perhaps halfway to drifting off, eyes lazily tracing the outline of a galaxy, but the ringing phone startles her wide awake again immediately. Not many people have her number. Even fewer of them use it. 

She picks up her phone, blinking at the bright light of the screen. O is calling her, his sweet, smiling face displayed in the middle of her screen. 

She answers immediately, because of course she does. 

“Hi,” she begins. “O? What’s goin’ on? You haven’t called in ages. And you’re supposed to be sleeping. Is there trouble?” 

He sighs, and she hears it in a rush of static down the phone line. “No trouble,” he murmurs, and he sounds exhausted. “No real trouble. Just- just a bad dream, Doctor.” 

Her expression softens. He’s talked her through the panic after a nightmare so many times, even at what must be ridiculous times of the night for him. No matter when she texts, he’s there within five minutes. So of course, she will do the same for him in a heartsbeat. 

“Sorry,” she says back, her voice soft. “D’you want to talk about it?”

There’s a long pause. If it wasn’t for the fact that she could hear his slightly shaky breathing, she might think he’d hung up. 

“Do you ever dream about being alone, Doctor?” His voice sounds so world-weary. It reminds her, just for a moment, of Missy, back in the Vault. She squashes that comparison as soon as it arises. O is nothing like Missy. He’s special, and human, and he’s an escape from her whole chaotic, spiralling life. 

“Sometimes,” she admits. “More often, I dream about _not_ being alone. Monsters in the shadows, all that. You know. I’ve told you.” 

“Mm,” O hums. “I dreamt that I was the last person alive on- on Earth. The whole planet, Doctor, it was on fire. In ruins. Everything was gone, _everything_ \- all these great golden towers, the fields, the trees I used to sit under...gone.” 

His words conjure to mind an image of her own home planet. The vast spires of the Citadel, the surrounding fields that were strictly off-limits, and therefore full of rebellious young Time Lords. The Doctor wonders where on Earth he’s referring to- _great golden towers_ doesn’t sound like London. He’s made vague reference to his family ‘not being from around here’- India has lots of pretty gold buildings, doesn’t it? Yes. It’s obvious, now she thinks about it. 

“...Doctor?”

Oh, she’s been daydreaming again. 

“Sorry,” she says hastily. “Sorry, O. Got all think-y. Um- well. It was only a dream. Earth’s still very real. All fine. Go look out of your window,” she suggests. “Go see London. Big old city full of people. That’ll make you feel not alone.” 

She hears shuffling on the other end of the phone line, and the sound of a curtain being opened. O sighs again, and then for a minute, he’s silent. There’s so much distance between them, but she can almost see the pensive look on his face, the city lights reflected in his eyes. 

“...It’s not the same,” he says eventually. “All those people in their cars- I can’t _see_ them. Can’t talk to them. So... _impersonal_. That’s...that’s why I called you, Doctor.” He sounds a little embarrassed, and there’s a raw note in his voice that she hasn’t heard very often before. 

“Well,” she says. “‘M not on Earth, very long way away from it right now, so I don’t know why I help. But I’m glad I do. If I do. Do I help? I’m trying.” 

O laughs, and the sound makes her hearts flutter. “Yes, Doctor. You definitely help a bit. But- can I see you? Just over video call. I don’t want to drag you out of bed.” 

She would have dragged herself out of just about anywhere, travelled any distance, for the sake of going to see O. He’s precious to her. But she finds it ridiculously hard to admit that out loud, so instead she just hums an agreement into her phone. 

A few moments later, her phone buzzes, and she taps an icon on screen. O’s face appears in front of her. 

He’s lying on his side, face slightly hidden in a dark purple pillow. He’s got a purple t-shirt on, too, and his eyes are big and soft and a little sleepy. The Doctor finds herself struck with the sudden urge to reach through the screen and kiss him, and she hopes her blush won’t show up on camera. 

“Hi, O,” she says quietly. “Been a while.” 

“It has,” he agrees. “Your new self looks nice in photos, and even nicer this way. Think you’re going to blow me away when I actually see you in person.” He smiles sheepishly. 

The Doctor shifts in bed, in a way that oh-so-conveniently just happens to hide most of her face except one eye. The bare minimum. Because now she really _is_ blushing. 

“Thanks,” she mumbles, gazing at O on her phone screen. It’s astonishing how much compliments from most human males make her want to hide away in an entirely different body, but this particular human male makes her hearts race like they only usually do when she thinks of River, or Missy, or—

Okay, enough of that. 

“Um,” she says eloquently. “You look nice, too.” 

O laughs. He’s _gorgeous_. Something about him puts all her senses into overdrive, makes her _want_ like she never has before in this body. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” he says with a small smile. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think I’d be wearing nothing but a t-shirt the next time I saw you. I mean- I might have imagined the scenario once or twice, but- oh god, is that too forward? I’m sorry, Doctor, I, um- I-“

He stutters on for a bit, and she just stares at him wide-eyed. After a minute, she becomes vaguely aware that he’s working himself up into a fever pitch about this, and she should probably intervene. 

“O. It’s fine,” she assures him. “Really fine. Completely O-kay.” She beams, finally lifting her face from the pillow. “See what I did there? My point is. You’re pretty and it’s all good so you can stop worrying.” Nice one. Buried the flirtatious compliment amidst some platitudes, so she can pretend it didn’t happen if he brings it up. 

Several things appear to flit across his face in quick succession, although it’s hard to tell exactly what with the slightly dodgy phone video quality. Eventually, he seems to settle on _relieved_. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” he says with another sweet smile. His eyes are so huge, and dark, and she could just lose herself in them, the way they light up when he smiles... “If this was a cheesy romance story, I’d ask you what _you_ were wearing, and you’d pan the camera down and be half-naked as well.” 

She snorts, and shifts her phone so that he can see the fleecy blue pyjama trousers she’s taken to wearing in bed. “Not quite, I’m afraid. Don’t think I do cheesy romance very well.” 

Something else flits across O’s face for a second, so fast that it might have been a trick of the camera quality. “Not everyone’s born with the inherent clumsiness and complete lack of awareness at picking up on social cues of a romance novel protagonist, I guess,” he says with a soft sigh. 

“Hey,” she objects. “I happen to think you’re very charming.” 

Now it’s O’s turn to snort. “Tell that to anyone at MI6 and they’d laugh you out of the building.” 

“I don’t like your colleagues,” the Doctor says, frowning. Were it entirely up to her, she’d whisk O away and show him the stars. But he deflects her every time she asks, comes up with a reason why he can’t go, he’s not ready yet. She doesn’t understand it, but she wouldn’t dream of pressuring him. 

“I know.” O sighs. “Me neither. But- hey, Doctor, you distracted me from my nightmare. Thank you again. And sorry for my terrible flirting.” He presses a soft kiss to his fingertips, and blows it at the camera. 

She’s aware that she just turned red as a tomato, and not entirely sure what to do about it. 

“No problem,” she squeaks, brain scrambling for something she can say to fluster him in return. It’s not fair, that he can make her blush so easily over the _phone_. No one’s done _that_ since River. “It...wasn’t terrible.” 

“I hope that’s a compliment, and not just a polite way of saying that it was still pretty bad,” O teases. There’s a sparkle in his eyes that’s damn near irresistible. She hasn’t found a human so appealing in _ages_. 

“No! Definitely a compliment,” she says hastily. The Doctor lifts her head again, summoning some of her usual confidence from the depths of wherever it’s been hiding since O called her. “Very much lookin’ forward to hearing your not-terrible flirting in person, where I can do something about it.” There. That’s a good line. 

And O looks...stunned. His skin is dark and the room he’s in is darker still, but the Doctor is certain that there’s blood rushing to his cheeks. She has to feel a little bit smug about that. 

“Um,” he says. “Yes please, Doctor.” A small grin curves across his face, showing off full lips and then cracking to reveal a few teeth. She really wants to kiss him. Half just to know what it would feel like. Half for what she assumes are the normal reasons to want to kiss someone. She’s hardly an expert on feelings. 

“Good,” she says gently. “Another day. C’mon, O, you’re human and I bet it’s really late where you are. Get some sleep.” 

He nods, and she lifts a hand to end the video call when he stops her. 

“Wait- Doctor, could you, um- stay on call with me? Just- put your phone on your pillow next to you, something like that.” He looks embarrassed to ask, dark eyes flitting away from the screen. 

“Yeah,” she says softly, feeling her hearts doing _something_ in her chest that they probably shouldn’t be doing. “Sure, O. Sleep well.” 

“You too, Doctor,” he says, probably out of instinct. He knows she doesn’t sleep much. But...hm. 

She sets her phone down, curling up next to it. She can hear O’s steady breathing on the other end of the line, soft and slow and interspersed with the occasional deeper sigh. 

The Doctor closes her eyes. Sleep sounds undeniably nice. O has comforted her through countless nightmares, and now finally she’s been able to do the same for him.

Maybe for one night, her own mind will stop beating her up for long enough to have a peaceful rest. 

——

An insurmountable distance away, in a cramped studio flat in the centre of London, the Master presses his phone to his cheek, clinging to every soft noise made by the person he loves and hates more than anyone. Slowly, gently, lulled by the all-too-familiar sound of her breathing, he drifts back into an uneasy sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!! comments and kudos are very greatly appreciated <3


End file.
